Smith says the whole postal investigation was overblown. "The Post Office already had me summed up before I got there," explains Smith. "I felt it was unfair."
Smith says that he had access to the yellow Lamborghini in the mall all along. But he was going to use that only as an alternate, because market research had shown him that people preferred a red Lamborghini.
"The only thing I did wrong, I shouldn't have put the vehicle ID number in the paper," he says. "This whole thing with the Post Office was absurd. I went around it anyway."
"Even without the Better Business Bureau, I still have my own standard of ethics."
Beyond the paid advertising, a handful of newspapers and television stations helped to promote Smith's unique Christmas gift idea before the Postal Service investigation.
In mid-December, San Jose Mercury News columnist Dennis Rockstroh wrote about Dreamshare, saying:
"Business is so good, Smith has turned down interviews with three television stations and asked me not to publicize his order telephone number." And: "This is a new business for Smith, who until now, was a house painter."
On Jan. 30, more than a month later, and after the postal investigation had been reported, Rockstroh wrote another column with the headline: "Behold, a Lamborghini! Ride hawker's off the hook." In it, he told readers that the Lamborghini deal was back on, despite the Postal Service.
About the first of December, Jaclyn Hunter saw the advertisement in the San Jose Mercury News offering the test drives.
"I thought it would be really neat for my husband's Christmas present," Hunter says. "His favorite car has always been a Lamborghini. He started a new job this year, and he's been working his tail off, and it was just something special I could do."
She called the number in the ad and soon received a packet of information in the mail, including a color brochure on the Lamborghini. She sent in $95 for a half-hour test drive and received another packet of information, including the certificate for the test drive she gave her husband for Christmas. But he's never driven the car.
Shortly after Christmas, Hunter heard about the Postal Service investigation. She called and wrote to Smith, requesting a refund. He sent her information on the time-share venture (which includes "a beautiful female escort"). She says she called again and Smith promised her money back by Feb. 15. She hasn't gotten it.
"He's very good at making this stuff look good on paper," Hunter says of Smith. "I normally check into everything, and the one time I don't, something happens. We don't have this kind of money to be tied up in something that's not true."
Smith insists that he's been the victim of a decade of unfortunate situations. "Appearance is the imitation of reality," he says. "I've taken shortcuts, and I've made mistakes, and it all just looks bad. I've always done things on a shoestring budget, and sometimes that forces you to have to do things creatively.
"I just need to stop taking shortcuts," Smith says. "But the thing is that I've got myself so deep in the hole that I've got to get into something really big in order to pay these people back and survive myself.
"I really want this thing to work because I'm tired of walking away from something," he says. "The smart thing for me to do probably would be for me to go bankrupt and leave the state or the country. I'm not going to do that. I could do so -- I'm major in debt.
